40 Fun Facts About Landscaping

The first lawn mower, patented in England in 1830, was adapted from a mill machine that trimmed what?

Woolen cloth was shaved smooth by a bladed cylinder in a Gloucestershire mill, and engineer Edwin Budding saw the same reel could cut grass better than a scythe.

George Ballas of Houston invented which landscaping tool after watching the spinning brushes of an automatic car wash?

String trimmer number one was heavy-duty fishing line fixed to a tin can bolted to an edger, and Ballas sold the idea as the Weed Eater.

Which lawn ornaments did Sir Charles Isham bring from Germany in 1847 to decorate the grounds of Lamport Hall?

Garden gnomes reached Britain as 21 terracotta figures made by Philip Griebel, and the lone survivor, nicknamed Lampy, is insured for £1 million.

During World War I, which animals grazed the White House lawn so that no workers were needed for mowing?

Sheep kept the grass short for First Lady Edith Wilson, who had their wool auctioned to raise money for the American Red Cross.

Which popular lawn grass is native to nearly all of Europe and northern Asia, though its name points to America?

Kentucky bluegrass may have reached the New World in Spanish seed mixes, though botanists still disagree over whether it also grew wild in North America.

Which designer of New York's Central Park also landscaped the grounds of the US Capitol in Washington?

Frederick Law Olmsted worked as a seaman, merchant and journalist before turning to parks, and he later laid out the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina.

Which Asian vine, planted across the American South in the 1930s to stop soil erosion, became a notorious invasive weed?

Kudzu first reached the United States from Japan at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, decades before Civilian Conservation Corps crews planted it.

Which artificial grass, first sold as ChemGrass, was renamed after its 1966 debut in a domed Houston stadium?

AstroTurf had already been laid at a school in Providence, Rhode Island, two years before the Astrodome made it famous.

By a NASA researcher's satellite-based estimate, American lawns cover three times the acreage of which irrigated crop?

Corn was outstripped so far that, on researcher Cristina Milesi's figures, lawns could be considered the single largest irrigated crop in America by surface area.

Which low-water landscaping style was named in 1981 by a Denver Water planner using the Greek root for 'dry'?

Xeriscaping is so often misheard as 'zeroscaping' that Denver Water, where planner Nancy Leavitt coined the word, began rebranding it as ColoradoScaping in 2023.

Which sunken barrier, first named in print in a 1709 French gardening book, keeps livestock out without blocking views?

A ha-ha takes its name from the cry of surprise that strollers gave on suddenly noticing the hidden ditch in front of them.

Which art of clipping shrubs into ornamental shapes takes its name from the Latin word for a landscape gardener?

Topiary nearly died out in England after Alexander Pope mocked it in a 1713 essay, complete with a spoof catalogue of Adam and Eve clipped in yew.

Which landscaping term covers a yard's built elements, such as patios, driveways and retaining walls, not its plants?

Hardscape goes in first, because paving and walls alter the foundation of a yard; only then come the lawn, flower beds, trees and shrubs.

Which layer, spread over soil in bark, straw or recycled-rubber form, holds in moisture and keeps weeds down?

Mulch can even be alive, since moss lawns and other ground covers count as living versions of it.

Which garden structure of posts and crossbeams, often draped in vines, is named from the Latin for a projecting eave?

A pergola usually shades a walkway or sitting area, whereas an arbor is often a roofed bench enclosed by lattice panels for climbing plants.

Which name for an ornamental garden building, such as a sham ruin, comes from a French word that can mean 'delight'?

A folly could imitate almost anything: 18th-century estates put up Chinese temples, Egyptian pyramids, ruined abbeys and even Tatar tents.

Which soil, a blend of sand, silt and a little clay, is considered ideal for gardens because it drains yet holds water?

Loam is about 40 percent sand, 40 percent silt and 20 percent clay by weight, a mix that also holds on to nutrients.

Which plant, whose giants are the largest members of the grass family, comes in 'clumping' and 'running' types?

Bamboo includes some of the fastest-growing plants in the world, and its running kinds travel on long underground rhizomes while clumping kinds spread slowly.

Which New York park, opened in 2009, runs along an abandoned elevated viaduct of the West Side freight railroad?

The High Line was inspired by the Coulée verte, an elevated park completed in Paris in 1993, and a nonprofit formed in 1999 campaigned to save the viaduct.

Which English designer landscaped more than 170 parks, including Blenheim Palace, Chatsworth and Warwick Castle?

Capability Brown got his nickname by telling clients that their property had the 'capability' for improvement.

André Le Nôtre and architect Louis Le Vau worked together at which château, built for finance minister Nicolas Fouquet?

Vaux-le-Vicomte proved too dazzling for its owner, since Louis XIV had Fouquet arrested shortly after a famous party there in August 1661.

Which designer, whose failing eyesight ended her painting career, created over 400 gardens, many with Edwin Lutyens?

Gertrude Jekyll arranged plants in painterly drifts of color, and she wrote over 1,000 articles for magazines such as Country Life.

Which head gardener of Chatsworth went on to design London's Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibition of 1851?

Joseph Paxton also cultivated the Cavendish banana in Chatsworth's greenhouses; named after his employer's family, it is now the most consumed banana in the Western world.

Ryōan-ji, the Zen temple whose dry garden sets fifteen stones among raked pebbles, stands in which Japanese city?

Kyoto is home to a puzzle: from the temple's viewing veranda, at least one of the fifteen stones always stays hidden.

Gardens by the Bay, where 'Supertrees' up to 50 meters tall harvest solar power and vent hot air, is in which country?

Singapore announced the park in 2005 as a future national icon, and its 18 Supertrees shelter ferns, vines, orchids and bromeliads.

Which golf club, founded in 1932 on the site of a former plant nursery, names every hole after a tree or shrub?

Augusta National replaced a nursery called Fruitland, which is why its holes carry names such as Magnolia, Azalea, Juniper and Firethorn.

Which English royal palace has Britain's oldest surviving hedge maze, commissioned by King William III?

Hampton Court had its puzzle planted in hornbeam, later replaced by yew, and reaching the middle takes about 20 minutes.

The Generalife, a hillside garden villa of the Nasrid rulers beside the Alhambra, is in which Spanish city?

Granada gave the villa a name most often traced to an Arabic phrase that can mean 'Garden of the Architect'.

Since 2001, the grass courts of the Wimbledon tennis championships have been sown entirely with which lawn species?

Ryegrass took over completely from an older Wimbledon mix that had been 30 percent creeping red fescue.

On a bag of lawn fertilizer, the middle of the three N-P-K numbers gives the content of which nutrient?

Phosphorus is the P, though the printed figure is strictly the percentage by weight of phosphorus pentoxide, not of the pure element.

Which pruning system removes a tree's upper branches, keeping new shoots above the reach of grazing animals?

Pollarding has been common in Europe since medieval times, when the leafy regrowth was cut every few years as 'pollard hay' to feed livestock.

Which formal garden feature, developed in France by Claude Mollet, sets symmetrical beds and low hedges on level ground?

A parterre grew out of the patterned compartments of French Renaissance gardens, the designs that England called knot gardens.

Which watering method did Simcha Blass pioneer in Israel before co-founding the company Netafim with a kibbutz?

Drip irrigation became practical when Blass slowed the water by friction inside a plastic emitter, instead of using tiny holes that particles easily blocked.

Which Dutch designer, a leader of the New Perennial movement, co-designed Chicago's Lurie Garden, opened in 2004?

Piet Oudolf picks perennials and grasses at least as much for their structure as for flower color, and he opened his nursery at Hummelo with his wife Anja in the 1980s.

Which Brazilian landscape architect designed the Copacabana Beach promenade along Rio de Janeiro's Avenida Atlântica?

Roberto Burle Marx built his style on native plants, joining botanists on expeditions into Brazil's tropical forests to gather specimens.

Which designer, the first to call himself a 'landscape gardener', sold clients on his plans with illustrated Red Books?

Humphry Repton bound the books in red and filled them with watercolors whose overlays lifted to turn a 'before' view into the 'after'.

Which Persian garden layout, used at the Taj Mahal, divides a square plot into four parts separated by waterways?

Charbagh means 'four gardens', and the waterways came to stand for the four rivers of Paradise.

Which East Asian garden principle, called shakkei in Japanese, works a distant mountain into the garden's design?

Borrowed scenery is Chinese in origin despite its well-known Japanese name, and the term appears in the 17th-century garden treatise Yuanye.

The Meikleour hedge in Scotland, planted in 1745 and listed by Guinness as Earth's tallest, is made of which tree?

Beech trees here reach 30 meters, and local history says the men planting them left to fight at Culloden and never came back for their tools.

Which evergreen conifer, extensively used for hedges, makes up the genus Thuja?

Arborvitae takes its common name from the Latin for 'tree of life'; the genus Thuja has five species, two native to North America and three to eastern Asia.